Sunday, March 6, 2016

Wait, What?

I was led to this article on "secret" Donald Trump supporters at the Guardian just now. Weird stuff. Like the 29-year-old Latina whose testimonial kicks the whole thing off:

I’m a millennial woman, my parents immigrated from Castro’s Cuba, I
work as a trial attorney in Miami and I’m a born-again Christian. But
I’m voting for Donald Trump, and I’ve convinced all my friends and family to do so as well.

If she's stumping for Trump with "all" her friends and family, her support is not what I'd call a secret. And I don't see the supposed dissonance between being a Trump supporter and the child of Cuban emigres in Miami; that's generally, or stereotypically, a right-wing -- even fascist -- demographic. And she's weirdly out of touch in some of her talking points, as in "It was the year of Caitlyn Jenner" as part of her evidence about "the left's stranglehold on the national conversation of what is or isn't tolerable." But Jenner is a far right-wing wacko Republican who supports Ted Cruz. So, no real surprise here.

What got my attention, though, was the "casino supervisor" from Oklahoma:

I am a Democrat but will vote for Trump, because he is not bought and
paid for by anyone. We the American people are tired of politicians
owing favors to rich businessmen, bankers, oil companies and stock
markets. It should be against the law to have lobbyists involved with
government.

I've seen variations on this theme from many Trump fans. The thing is, Donald Trump is one of the buyers and payers-for; he's one of the rich businessmen to whom politicians owe favors. Having him in the White House would simply eliminate the middle-man, as it were, by putting Big Money more directly into power than it has been before. That seems to go right past the people who fantasize, as this guy does, that Trump is on the side of "the middle class and lower class," and would run the government "like a business," Cthulhu help us. No, I really don't think you want the government to be run like a business, especially by a businessman like Donald Trump.

I haven't read all the rest of the article, but from what I have read (see the gay American Muslim, for one, who thinks it's good to keep Muslims from the entering the US for a while), it seems to me that Donald Trump is this year's Barack Obama: the fans of both projected their hopes, fears, and especially fantasies on the charismatic leader who they believed would give them everything they wanted.